How to choose your hiking tent.
The purchase of your hiking tent is a very important element in the constitution of your hiking package. In order to choose the lucky woman, it is necessary to determine what use, where and when you will bivouac with your hiking tent and what mode of transport you will use.
The different uses of your tent.
-Homelessness.
Whether on foot, by bike or by canoe, you will change places every day and set up and dismantle your tent every day. Choose a lightweight, 3-season tent that is easy to assemble with colour-coded poles. For bikepacking enthusiasts, there are tents with shortened hoops to attach the storage bag to the hanger or frame.
-The ultra light hike.
You want to go fast, take the bare essentials and are on the lookout for the smallest gram in your equipment. Adapters of ultra-light walking (MUL) will choose tents that are mostly less than one kg for two people. Nemo, MSR, Big Agnes, Helsport, Camp each provide extremely lightweight and high quality products. Of course, this minimum weight has a disadvantage with a greater fragility in the canvas. The hoops will not allow you to face winter or windy conditions.
-Expeditions and high mountains.
You will need to choose a 4-season tent whose construction and materials can withstand snow, storms and heavy rainfall. The Scandinavian manufacturers Hilleberg and Helsport specialise in shipping tents with impeccable manufacturing quality. Of course, each brand has a 4-season program in its offer.
-The campsite.
You will stay several days in the same place. The weight of the tent doesn't matter, what you need is comfort. Space also and especially in height. Tipis can be a good choice for base camps. In recent years, we have also seen the appearance of hanging tents. Tentsile is a pioneer in this segment. This is another way to approach the bivouac.
The shape of the tent
There are 3 types of tents:
-The dome tent:
It has the particularity of being self-supporting, i. e. it generally stands alone with two crossed hoops, if the weather is mild, there is no need to guy it. There are now hoops fixed together by means of a central hub. This makes it easier to fold the poles and makes the tent even faster to set up. For expedition tents, the construction is geodesic with more hoops crossing each other for better wind and snow resistance.
-The tunnel tent:
It is not self-supporting and must be rigged to stand upright. It generally offers a large apse to store your equipment and cook under cover. The walls are more vertical than the domes and offer a larger interior space. It has good wind resistance and is often used on polar expeditions for its large storage capacity.
-The tipi:
Its pyramidal shape and central post make it a comfortable, spacious and often able to accommodate 8-10 people. If you add a wooden stove, it will be the perfect base camp.
The number of places and height
The number of places in your hiking tent will have an impact on the weight and comfort level you are looking for. If there are two of you, want to be really comfortable and store things in the inner canvas, take a 3-seater tent. Also check if the walls are vertical or tilted and how high the tent is.
The resistance of materials and waterproofness.
The waterproofness of tent fabrics is measured as for clothing in mm or Schmerber. It varies from 1500mm for ultra-light tent fabrics to 10000mm for expedition tent floors.
Also check if the seams are welded or not and if the fabric has been treated with a water-repellent treatment. A distinction is made between the treatment with a rather basic polyurethane coating and the durable and flexible silicone treatment used on both sides of high-end tents.
The abrasion resistance of the fabric is expressed in deniers (D). The higher the height, the stronger the fabric will be. Between 15D for ultra-light tents and 40D for 4-season tents.
The poles can be made of fibreglass for low-end tents, carbon for extremely light tents but most often they will be made of aluminium. DAC, which is the main supplier of quality brands, offers different technologies for different tents. The diameters are of course larger (10mm instead of 8.7mm) on the 4-season tents for greater strength.

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